学进去

“Who did this?” asked the teacher. Thirty children tried to think about what they had done. She wasn’t really asking: she was demanding a(n) _________. She seldom became _________, but she was this time. She held up a piece of broken glass and asked, “Who broke this window?”

“Oh, oh,” I thought. I was the one who broke the window. I had not done it on purpose. I was _________ my baseball. It needed more practice. Why did it have to be me? It wasn’t really my _________. If I admitted guilt, I would be in a lot of trouble. How would I be able to pay for a big window like that? I didn’t even get an allowance (零花钱). My father would beat me! I didn’t want to _________ my hand, but some force much stronger than I was pulled it skyward. I told the _________. “I did it,” I said no more. It was hard enough saying what I had done.

My teacher went to one of our library _________ and took down a book. She then walked towards my desk. I had never known my teacher to _________ a student, but I feared she was going to start with me.

“I know how you like birds,” she said as she stood looking down at my red face. “Here is that field guide about birds that you are constantly _________. It is yours. It’s time we got a new one for the school __________. You will not be punished as long as you remember that I am not rewarding you for your misdeed, I am rewarding you for your truthfulness.”

I couldn’t believe it! I wasn’t being punished and got my very own bird field guide, the very one that I had been __________ money to buy. The money would go to the school to buy a new __________.

The book is gone, so is my __________ teacher. All that remains of that day is my memory and the lesson my teacher __________ me. That lesson stays with me every day and it will __________ forever.